On the 27th of May, 1816, the Secretary of War instructed Agent Meigs
to endeavor, at the next session of the national council of the
Cherokees, to obtain a cession of the Cherokee claim north of Tennessee
River within the State of Tennessee. For this proposed cession he was
authorized to pay $20,000, in one or more payments, and $5,000 in
presents; also to give Colonel Lowry, an influential chief among them,
a sum equal to the value of his improvements.[218]
He was further instructed to make an effort to secure the cession of
the lands which they had declined to sell the previous winter and
which lay to the west of a line drawn due south from that point of the
Tennessee River intersected by the eastern boundary of Madison County,
Alabama.
The necessity for these cessions, and especially that of the former
tract, had been urged upon the Government of the United States by the
legislature and by the citizens of Tennessee, many of whom had been
purchasers of land within its limits, from the State of North Carolina,
a quarter of a century previous, and who had been restrained from
possession and occupancy of the same by the United States authorities
so long as the Indian title remained unextinguished. In the event that
the national council of the Cherokees should decline to accede to the
desired cessions, Agent Meigs was to urge that the Cherokee delegation
appointed to meet the boundary commissioners at the Chickasaw Council
House on the 1st of September following should be invested with full
authority for the conclusion of such adjustment of boundaries as might
be determined on at that place. This authority was conditionally
granted by the council,[219] and when the delegation came to meet the
United States commissioners at the Chickasaw Council House, in the
month of September, an agreement was made as to boundaries as set
forth in the second article of the treaty of September 14, 1816. By
this agreement the Cherokees ceded all claim west of a line from Camp
Coffee to the Coosa River and south of a line from the latter point to
Flat Rock, on Bear Creek.[220] The treaty was ratified by the nation in
general council, at Turkeytown, on the 4th of October following.[221]
_Alabama alleges error in survey._--When the due-south line from
Camp Coffee provided for in the treaty was surveyed, the surveyor,
through an error in running it, deflected somewhat to the west. When
the adjacent country came to be surveyed and opened up to settlement
much complaint was made, and the legislature of Alabama[222] passed a
joint resolution reciting the fact that through this erroneous survey
much valuable land had been left within the Cherokee limits which had
properly been ceded to the United States and instructing Alabama's
delegation in Congress to take measures for having the line correctly
run. The matter having been by Congress referred to the Secretary of
War for investigation and report, the Commissioner of the General Land
Office, at his request, reported[223] that when the public surveys were
made in that section it was found that neither the line due south from
Camp Coffee nor from the head of Caney Creek had been surveyed on a
true meridian. Inasmuch, however, as they had been run and marked by
commissioners appointed by the United States, the surveyors necessarily
made the public surveys in conformity to them. By this deviation from
the true meridian the United States and the State of Alabama had
gained more land from the manner in which the Caney Creek or Chickasaw
boundary line had been run than had been lost by the deviation in the
Cherokee or Camp Coffee line, and the quantity in either case did not
perhaps exceed six or eight thousand acres.
[Footnote 215: May 25.]
[Footnote 216: April 7.]
[Footnote 217: United States Statutes at Large, Vol. VII, p. 148.]
[Footnote 218: See Indian Office records.]
[Footnote 219: Letter of Return J. Meigs to the Secretary of War, dated
August 19, 1816. American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. II, p.
113.]
[Footnote 220: Report of Commissioners Jackson, Merriwether, and
Franklin to Secretary of War, dated Chickasaw Council House, September
20, 1816. American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. II, p. 104.]
[Footnote 221: Report of Commissioners Jackson and Merriwether to
Secretary of War, October 4, 1816.]
[Footnote 222: January 7, 1828.]
[Footnote 223: February 25, 1828.]